Norwalk man to have surgery after industrial accident

A Norwalk man whose forearm got tangled in some gears during an industrial accident was scheduled to have reconstructive surgery on his arm and hand Thursday.

"They're going to do the best they can. They're not promising I'll have full strength like I did before," Gregory D. Johnson said from Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo.

"My forearm looks like hamburger meat," he added.

The 27-year-old Milan Avenue man is a "lead" and in charge of machinery at New Horizon Baking Co., 211 Woodlawn Ave.

First responders received a 9-1-1 call about the accident at 6:54 a.m. Wednesday.

"The machine jammed up. I was trying to get it unjammed," said Johnson, who has worked at New Horizon "just shy of three years."

"It reached its maximum (load) and it came down," he said, which caused some gears to get wrapped around his forearm.

Norwalk police, firefighters and North Central EMS responded to New Horizon after Johnson's supervisor called 9-1-1. All the agencies' reports indicate there was a male subject caught or trapped in a machine.

But when Officer Timothy Skinner and firefighters arrived, they said Johnson was out of the machine lying on the ground and waiting for an ambulance.

"It was a basic EMS call at that point," said Capt. Dan Hunt, of the Norwalk Fire Department.

North Central was on the scene at 6:59 a.m. Fourteen minutes later, a firefighter drove Johnson in an ambulance to Fisher-Titus Medical Center, operations manager Rick Shields said.

"It was listed as an industrial accident," said Shields, who couldn't provide further information due to federal privacy laws.

Johnson said he was at Fisher-Titus for an hour to about 90 minutes before an ambulance transported him to Mercy St. Vincent.

The patient was complimentary of how well his co-workers responded to the accident.

"They all worked to get me out. ... Everyone did their job," Johnson said.